Page:The Great Harry Thaw Case.djvu/281



"Snydecker says that affidavit was taken to the Twenty-seventh street studio and her signature appears exactly opposite the date.

"Strange that after her return from Europe—from Thaw—she should immediately have gone to him, to White.

"A knight of old, redressing the wrongs of injured maidens, would not have gone to Rector's at 2 o'clock in the morning, would not have gone to cakewalks and cafes, to the Dead Rat in Paris and resorts in other places, to remain there all night and go home when the market wakes.

"Almost within earshot of his wife he asked Smith—this knight of old asked:

"Would you like to meet a nice, buxom brunette? Are you much married? I am going abroad and I can put you next.'

"Every element, gentlemen, in this case is simply an ordinary, mere, vulgar, every-day, Tenderloin, low, sordid murder.

"If this rich young man instead of being Harry Thaw, the son of a millionaire of Pittsburg, had been a poor Italian and his victim, instead of a man of artistic temperament, a maker of plaster casts, and a girl whom they quarreled about was a chorus girl in the London Theater, how long would brainstorms and paranoia have prevailed?

"Simply a mere, ordinary Tenderloin homicide. Because she has a pretty face and a child-like manner, she is coming here to tell a tissue of lies to prevent you gentlemen from putting a deliberate, cold-blooded murderer under ground.

"Will you gentlemen acquit a cold-blooded, cowardly, deliberate murderer on the ground of 'dementia Americana'?

"Thaw himself, the girl swore, accused her of having